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grefven wrote:
AoW, even by being a small company of three people, can assign 30 minutes *every day* to read and answer all e-mail. The lack of communication by their part is what is driving the nail into the coffin.

Their 5 week delayed response to me was a sign of a company that cares about customers first!

I've got a ton of AoW models. I've supported AoW since the very start. I got the first ones when Felix was just starting out years ago, there were only a few of them and you had to email him to buy them. Which I did. First purchase April 2007.

Since then, I've bought literally dozens of them at retail. But since hearing about all of the fulfilment problems with the Chaos Warriors, and now seeing how Felix treats communication and his backers since the IGG project (which I'm a backer of), I'm much more cautious.

It is a pity. I bought and painted one of Felix's dwarves for a painting contest last year, and had a great time with it. Nobody can fault his work from a technical standpoint, but this lack of developments is not good for his future.

It's two different problems

First

AoW is trying to grow from a small volume 'boutique' company to one that can sell in volume. It's been difficult with lots of wrong turns on the way,

but (possibly) they look to have turned a corner now based on these new releases which are reported to be decent quality and suitable for large scale production (if so that's great)

Second

Felix is just being daft about not prioritising sculpting stuff that will let him supply the most Indiegogo backers in the shortest amount of time.

I really hope the earlier Spanish poster can convince him of this as the longer it takes to make the standard bearer the worse his reputation will end up

As I've stated before. My guess to why AoW keep delaying the Standard Bearer is most likely because they've spent all the money from the IGG campaign, and can't affort shipping the single figure to all people who ordered it. So they push it back to the end of the pipeline to postpone the problem. But that's just a guess.

grefven wrote:
As I've stated before. My guess to why AoW keep delaying the Standard Bearer is most likely because they've spent all the money from the IGG campaign, and can't affort shipping the single figure to all people who ordered it. So they push it back to the end of the pipeline to postpone the problem. But that's just a guess.

That is entirely possible. Given the increase in international shipping this year. I wonder how much it would cost to bulk ship them to the US, and let someone else ship them from there. Might be cheaper for him in the long run.

I thought we'd have seen Felix's response by now!

I am really looking forward to what the Ant found out!

sparkywtf wrote:

grefven wrote:
As I've stated before. My guess to why AoW keep delaying the Standard Bearer is most likely because they've spent all the money from the IGG campaign, and can't affort shipping the single figure to all people who ordered it. So they push it back to the end of the pipeline to postpone the problem. But that's just a guess.

That is entirely possible. Given the increase in international shipping this year. I wonder how much it would cost to bulk ship them to the US, and let someone else ship them from there. Might be cheaper for him in the long run.

Grefven's posit is entirely possible. Though AoW is based in Spain, so the much larger than usual USPS increases mean nothing to him. I'm sure Spain has an annual increase, as most nations do, but putting it off further just increases that eventual cost. Bulk shipping to the US and then having an agent take it from there would probably be an entirely sensible move, if he has a trustworthy contact there...

 Alpharius wrote:
I thought we'd have seen Felix's response by now!

I am really looking forward to what the Ant found out!

Well, there is a bit of a time difference but I suspect that an unfavorable response is the real reason he didn't rush to post it. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that part of the reason he is sculpting other units and not the standard bearer is that money (from Ant's posts) is too tight. Sculpting the standard bearer means having to pay for international shipping to all the backers to ship the standard bearer. If they did use up alot of their funds as Ant said on different production techniques that didn't work for one reason or another, they may not have enough cash on hand to ship orders that don't bring in immediate additional funds.

I highly doubt he's out of money, he's already stated he hasn't sculpted him yet. Meanwhile we've got several metal releases and three plastic regiment releases (after the stumbling 4 or 5 warcast releases)

Regardless,

here's the shots of the Pathfinders. As you can see, they are incredibly high quality. They beat the pants off the GW beastman in the size comparison pic. The box comes with an instruction sheet, bits box (on the instructions they even say to use the included plastic blister to hold your leftover parts), and two baggies of bits. Each baggie contains 10 dwarves with legs, torsos w/ heads attached - which looks like 10 uniquely sculpted torsos, including two with hoods down - backpacks, backpacks with crossbows in them, arms w/ crossbows, arms w/ great weapons... plus each bag contains additional bits to make a standard bearer, musician, etc. So you can either make two regiments of ten, each with command, or one regiment of twenty with command with a set of command bits left over, or even no command at all. And because of the sheer number of unique sculpts, no dwarf would look the same.

Very very pleased with these, and I'm secretly trying to find a reason to order another box. I'm waiting for Mini Market to get the new Thunderers in because I'm ordering that box as soon as they do.

For anyone who wants to grab them, I always recommend Miniature Market, they have a few in stock for 36 bucks a box http://www.miniaturemarket.com/aowpl07.html

 judgedoug wrote:
I highly doubt he's out of money, he's already stated he hasn't sculpted him yet. Meanwhile we've got several metal releases and three plastic regiment releases (after the stumbling 4 or 5 warcast releases)

He may not be "out" of money, but he may not have enough to pay shipping on everything. If he would have skipped the metal and plastic regiments and did the standard bearer first, there would be tons of great PR and happy people. Instead we are getting bitter and angry, even though we expected this from the start.

I should see what one would have to do to import a box of the minis and ship them out to the US. We do a lot of shipping at work already, and more boxes helps our rates.

Hi guys!

got to speak to felix yesterday a good while, I told him he really should do the standard bearer as soon as possible, and I told him to take a look at dakka dakka.
To sum up he said many thanks for posting here. Said he would take a look and email me (there was many people playing yesterday at aow hq (felix was playing too) so it sure was not the moment to take a decision).

received an email this eve telling me that he's going to start modelling it during october, so it should be ready to be claimed the latest on the 2nd half of november!


By the way, yesterday was such a nice eve playing warthrone at aow! Loads of miniatures, dices and cookies, drink and coffee for everyone (loads and for free).
Really guys, hope you could be there one eve, to see how nice the people at aow are!

Got to see the new Thunder Warriors plastics and they are fantastic, even better than the pathfinders in my opinion!
I can also confirm the sculpts for the plastic Vestals of Toment (mean & sexy Legions of the Apocalypse ladies) are well on their way too!

Adder Ant wrote:
received an email this eve telling me that he's going to start modelling it during october, so it should be ready to be claimed the latest on the 2nd half of november!

That whole post was great, but this part... doubly so . Thanks for bringing it up to him! Man, if he follows through and sculpts the standard bearer next month to be claimed this year, that would really really help!

Can't wait to see some Thunderers "in the wild", looks like a great kit.

Congratulations on your part in getting Felix to see reason, Adder Ant. It's for his good as much as it is his creditors'.

Adder Ant wrote:
I can also confirm the sculpts for the plastic Vestals of Toment (mean & sexy Legions of the Apocalypse ladies) are well on their way too!

I look forwards to hearing more. If the miniatures are good and the price hasn't been jacked up like certain other companies I could mention, I'll be buying some.

 judgedoug wrote:
I highly doubt he's out of money, he's already stated he hasn't sculpted him yet. Meanwhile we've got several metal releases and three plastic regiment releases (after the stumbling 4 or 5 warcast releases)

Regardless,

here's the shots of the Pathfinders. As you can see, they are incredibly high quality. They beat the pants off the GW beastman in the size comparison pic. The box comes with an instruction sheet, bits box (on the instructions they even say to use the included plastic blister to hold your leftover parts), and two baggies of bits. Each baggie contains 10 dwarves with legs, torsos w/ heads attached - which looks like 10 uniquely sculpted torsos, including two with hoods down - backpacks, backpacks with crossbows in them, arms w/ crossbows, arms w/ great weapons... plus each bag contains additional bits to make a standard bearer, musician, etc. So you can either make two regiments of ten, each with command, or one regiment of twenty with command with a set of command bits left over, or even no command at all. And because of the sheer number of unique sculpts, no dwarf would look the same.

Very very pleased with these, and I'm secretly trying to find a reason to order another box. I'm waiting for Mini Market to get the new Thunderers in because I'm ordering that box as soon as they do.

For anyone who wants to grab them, I always recommend Miniature Market, they have a few in stock for 36 bucks a box http://www.miniaturemarket.com/aowpl07.html

These are some great minis!!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Adder Ant wrote:
Hi guys!

got to speak to felix yesterday a good while, I told him he really should do the standard bearer as soon as possible, and I told him to take a look at dakka dakka.
To sum up he said many thanks for posting here. Said he would take a look and email me (there was many people playing yesterday at aow hq (felix was playing too) so it sure was not the moment to take a decision).

received an email this eve telling me that he's going to start modelling it during october, so it should be ready to be claimed the latest on the 2nd half of november!


By the way, yesterday was such a nice eve playing warthrone at aow! Loads of miniatures, dices and cookies, drink and coffee for everyone (loads and for free).
Really guys, hope you could be there one eve, to see how nice the people at aow are!

Got to see the new Thunder Warriors plastics and they are fantastic, even better than the pathfinders in my opinion!
I can also confirm the sculpts for the plastic Vestals of Toment (mean & sexy Legions of the Apocalypse ladies) are well on their way too!

Gracias for the news amigo!

Well done Ant Adder

that news will make many people happy!

we do appreciate you effort

I can understand most peoples being unhappy due to the circumstances, however as the Limited Dwarf standard was included as the lowest backing pledge I can sort of under stand why he has left it till last or at least later.

Look at it like this if you had laid out several hundreds of dollars or 15 dollars which would be the greater concern?
For me it would be the hundreds of dollars, so maybe he felt the same and felt it was better to release the box sets which included the greater outlay.

I am not undermining anyone who has only ordered the standard by any means, but I do think it is understandable to a degree that this could be the line of thought.

However I do feel that it looks like Felix is turning this around to the interest of the backers, which is at least showing some consideration to his backers.

I would also like to say I have a had a few dealings with Felix and AOW most good, however I did have an issue once concerning an order which was a bit annoying, but I will say that Felix went out of his way to amend it and I was more than happy in the end.

Also they do make exceedingly good miniatures

Your point would be valid (well more valid) if the majority of backers weren't just for the one model.

He could have most of the pledges shipped and done by making 1 model. Instead he choose to work on other boxes.

The money from the 15 dollar model outweighs the money on the more expensive sets.

sparkywtf wrote:
Your point would be valid (well more valid) if the majority of backers weren't just for the one model.

He could have most of the pledges shipped and done by making 1 model. Instead he choose to work on other boxes.

The money from the 15 dollar model outweighs the money on the more expensive sets.

Fair point

But I still see as a business point of view that the standard is not the most important piece, those are limited to the campaign only so are not going to recoup any further funds.

So to try and get some box sets out first means they can stay in business and make some profit or at least stay afloat, after all I would not want to see them disappear for the sake of a limited edition model.

I disagree Lone Dirty Dog. From a business sense it's better to produce it in this case. Most of us that went in for it was to test the waters. Producing it quickly would have meant his customer credit would have rebounded well from previous oopsies. I could understand not releasing it until after the first box is ready (so people getting it might pick up a box after receiving it) but waiting till the end (or after the 4th unit as he is now doing) was a bad idea.

That said I look forward to seeing it. I hope he contacts people since it's been over a year to get addresses.

sparkywtf wrote:
The money from the 15 dollar model outweighs the money on the more expensive sets.

No it doesn't. The standard only pledges amount to slightly over 1/10th of the total funds. There are a lot of people, so they show up more in the discussion, but it was relatively minor to the financial success of the campaign.

I would think that most of the higher backers also added on for the standard bearer, though. And most campaigns fulfill the larger number of lower pledges first for exactly this reason- you can make hundreds of people wait, or a smaller number who will be waiting anyway since all of the regiment options aren't coming for a long time.

And sculpting ONE model doesn't push regiments back, come on . They sculpt other single models all the time- there's a hero for the pathfinders now, too.

So, that argument doesn't hold any water... there is a reason every other campaign I've seen has done the opposite!

I'm not saying he shouldn't do the standard bearer first, in fact I think it probably should have been the very first thing he sculpted. However the claim that it was the bulk of the pledges is demonstrably wrong.

It was only a suggestion as to why he may have delayed it, but one thing if you was unhappy with previous issues why would you then back this ?

I aint saying that AOW is perfect but I don't think (personally) waiting on the release of one miniature over box sets is that big of an issue.

Sorry just my point of view, maybe for those that ordered only the Limited standard it is a bit of a bull ache but at least now it's turning around.

Update!

Avatars of War IndieGoGo Update wrote:After many petitions received, despite the intial plan was it to be the "culminating" miniature of the Dwarf army, Felix will sculpt the Army Standard Bearer during October instead of doing it as the last model of the army.
Hope you find it to be good news!

I can only once again say thank you very, Very much to Adder Ant for passing on the concerns of Dakka posters and campaign backers, this is fantastic news!

Ditto - popped in the thread to say Kudos to Adder for getting the BSB pushed to the top of the list. Nicely done!

Of course - now people will be pestering him all the time to get so-and-so unit sculpted by Felix.

I'm pumped to hear this. If it materializes he'll be seeing me purchase 1-2 of every regiment box he comes out with as I'll be building my Dwarf army. I might even consider picking them up by pre-ordering thru his site. We'll see.

Thanks for taking the concerns to him Adder. It'll increase his rep to no end if he gets that out to us before the holidays

Yeah, downside to this for adder is he's now AoW's unpaid worldwide CS rep

Whatever it takes!

I'm probably going to be buying a lot of Dwarves from AoW, as they get released!

Kudos to both Adder for passing on the message, and to Felix for listening to his customers. This can only make people happier, and in turn, I'm sure it will help motivate more people to buy AoW figures, especially once they have the standards in hand. I'm planning on buying a bunch of X-Wing ships from MM in a few weeks, and thanks to this news and JudgeDoug's pictures, I'll probably grab a box of pathfinders as well.